Unapologetic Christianity

For all the various arguments and debates for and against Christianity, eventually we must focus on Christ. Who was Jesus?

This is the question to which all our conversations should lead. Apologetics is a pointless pursuit if its ultimate end is not the presentation of the gospel of Jesus.

Many admirers

Generally, Jesus has been revered and admired, if not worshipped, by all those who have read the Gospels. Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu religious reformer, asked: ‘What, then, does Jesus mean to me? To me, He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had’ (Gandhi, What Jesus Means to Me, ed. R.K. Prabhu).

Albert Einstein, the agnostic Jewish scientist was asked about his view of Jesus in a newspaper interview. His reply was striking: ‘No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus’ (Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post interview, 1929).

Vincent Van Gogh, the Impressionist artist, found inspiration in the Jesus of the Gospels: ‘He lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as colour, working in living flesh’ (Van Gogh, Letter to Emile Bernard). Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have found something to admire in Jesus. Artists, military commanders, composers and industrial leaders have found inspiration in Jesus.

Strategy of avoidance

But what does someone, who would admire Jesus without worshipping him as Lord and Saviour, do? A common strategy is to pretend there are two people: a Jesus we like and a Jesus we don’t like. We can then hold on to what we like (we call him the real Jesus) and ditch the characteristics we don’t like (we can call him the Jesus of church invention). This way of managing Jesus has been popular for the past 200 years. A new version appeared as a bestselling novel by children’s author Philip Pullman.

Pullman was challenged by Archbishop Rowan Williams to write a story about the life of Jesus. The result was The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The story tells of how a young unmarried girl had a one-night stand and gave birth to twins. One she called Jesus. He grew up to be a wise and thoughtful man who would one day be crucified, a victim of his own popularity. The other was a sickly child whom she called Christ. He grew up to be a liar and fantasist who manipulated his brother so that an organised religion could be built around him.

On the death of Jesus, the scoundrel Christ, being his twin, was mistaken for a resurrected appearance of his brother and so a legend was born. The names of the brothers became forever fused as the Jesus Christ of Christian theology.

Rather than appealing to historical evidence or research, Pullman writes an imaginative story (preventing a critic from making this obvious point: Philip, you have made this all up!). The main aim of his retelling is to separate an admirable, if misunderstood, Jesus from a nasty, manipulative, Christ.

Author’s mirror image

This attempt to divide the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith has been rehashed over the past 200 years by various theologians and thinkers. And it is a failure. Such projects always tell us more about their authors than about the subject. In 1909, the Catholic theologian George Tyrrell made a perceptive comment on the attempt by liberal theologians to discover the historical Jesus. Their reconstructed Jesus was always ‘the reflection of a liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well’ (George Tyrrell, Christianity at the Crossroads). In other words, the Jesus they thought they had brought to light was simply a reflection of what they admired, or wanted to admire, in themselves. Likewise, Philip Pullman’s novel tells us a great deal about the author’s presuppositions, but next to nothing about the historical Jesus.

Explain the impact

But all of these attempts do serve to reinforce the enduring fascination with the penniless preacher from Nazareth. The vague, limp reconstructed Jesus of the Martin Scorsese film adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ, like the figment of Pullman’s imagination, only highlights their obvious weakness. Those reconstructed Jesuses could never have caused the earthquake of history that would bring down empires, raise up artists and poets, capture the admiration of religious leaders and inspire bold social reformation.

To explain the real impact of Jesus, something more is needed. To find that something more we need to encourage our friends to turn from works of fiction and read the Gospels for themselves.

It is here that they are confronted by someone who is no mere man. This is not another moral teacher, thoughtful philosopher or political revolutionary. Such people come and go. But not Jesus. The enduring legacy of Jesus is a result of his unchanging identity as the God who became man who now continues to speak, command and transform through his word. If there is one positive result from all the attempts to undermine the historical Jesus, it is that some will turn to the Gospels and read for themselves of the one who cannot be pressed into a shape of our own choosing.

Chris Sinkinson lectures in apologetics at Moorlands College, Christchurch, Dorset, and is pastor of Alderholt Evangelical Church.

Jesus: the man of mystery?

Many admirers

Strategy of avoidance

Author’s mirror image

Explain the impact

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